9 ms·

All accurate and objective and good for everyone to know early rather than late. Moving a bit further from the specifics, it's worth noting that this is not a n

All accurate and objective and good for everyone to know early rather than late. Moving a bit further from the specifics, it's worth noting that this is not a natural state of affairs. Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives and thus making catastrophic deception nearly impossible. Likewise vast sums of wealth did not exist nor total social and fiscal isolation surrounded by the complete opposite that characterize our city streets and daily life. My point is that human psychology did not evolve in the context of our current world and will have enormous difficulty dealing with its bad sides. Although the specifics will vary, the number of people in the poster's position is undoubtedly enormous, with the vast majority too tired or ashamed of discussing it or just blaming themselves. This being the case, it would be nice to have serious study of it and resources to address it more effectively. Not to criticize any poster, but it is unfortunate than seeking advice from the web is currently the best one can do.

fxtentacle 6y ago
Even at that time, psychopaths were still successful enough to pass on the genes for their trait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Environment
- cat199 6y ago
  ... as were those that think biology predetermines everything
  - yownie 6y ago
    not really sure what point you're trying to make here. You don't believe in biology?
    - kitotik 6y ago
      Perhaps it was a reference to nature vs. nurture, and how they can both play a part in outcomes.
      - mrslave 6y ago
        That's what I read into it. While nature vs nurture is fun to speculate on, when raised in criticism of another's work it is usually only speculation and otherwise unproductive. Also often ignored is that they are somewhat conflated insofar as people's nature creates environments that then (not independently) nurture.
    - mcnamaratw 6y ago
      I'm not sure this is fair. Nobody really knows to what extent psychopathy is inherited vs caused by upbringing. The problem isn't necessarily disbelief in biology, the problem is nobody actually knows the answer. Challenging something that's universally challenged seems comprehensible to me.
zozbot234 6y ago
> Moving a bit further from the specifics, it's worth noting that this is not a natural state of affairs. Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives Yup, there are still some anarcho-primitivists who think technology was a bad deal for us humans overall, and that living in a tribal setting of hunters-gatherers is best. The infamous "unabomber manifesto" was broadly advocating for this worldview, albeit with a very negative, nihilistic twist to it as one might expect. Kinda ironic to point that out when you look at OP's nearly-utopian attitude to tech, of course.
- paypalcust83 6y ago
  UB started with the right observations, but arrived at the wrong means prescriptions. He wandered off alone into the weeds, in both senses. A wiser realization is that it's those in established power and the rich who are actively or willfully ignorantly sabotaging the planet and condemning billions of people to relatively more poverty, misery, disease, and death. A million people nonviolently showing up to the seats of power, arresting crooked politicians and their enablers, and fine-tuning what cannot be fixed (by any POTUS, SCOTUS, or COTUS) from within (separation between church and wealth and state, public campaign financing, clean elections observed with exit polls and international observers, de-emphasized celebrity political promotion perhaps by lottery [as the ancient Greeks] rather than mainstream media popularity contest) are the necessary first steps before fixing anything else.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    "Nonviolently showing up"? I might or might not agree but let's face it, most of us won't even bother to show up at a voting place on election day. People just don't care. Maybe they'll kvetch to their acquaintances about how bad the other side is, but overall there's a lot of complacency. Similarly, you don't need to arrest corrupt politicians, you just need to not vote for them. Support a primary challenger if they're incumbents. That kind of thing. But of course that's not going to happen either.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
Thorentis 6y ago
I agree with the OP comment, and also with this one. It is important to understand two things in coping with the state of the world in my opinion. 1) The reality is you need to find validation and fulfilment outside of work, because in our current society you are just a drone. 2) Don't be depressed because it seems like this is how it's always been. It hasn't. Our work culture is broken. People never used to be so far removed from their work. Trying to combine work and life is a natural thing, because people used to be tied up in it. Working the land, being close to home, running a family business, belonging to a small town of people you all known, having the social safety net of many people that are close to you and your family, being an independent contributor in the town's economy, etc. etc. This is how things were a few hundred years ago. Yes, there was less high tech gadgetry. There were corrupt officials, plagues, bad people. There will always be some element of this. I really get the sense that so much of the first world's unhappiness right now is due to compartmentalising (the containerising if you like) of our lives. The solution to burnout at work is to create greater separation between work and home. But the problem itself is that we even need to do this. People can't live to enjoy what they do any more. You need to trade the majority of your waking hours for money you need to live. And when you do live, you're dreading returning to work and feeling burnout anyway. How depressing. This is why the working-from-home trend that I hope COVID will kick-off is going to be a good thing. While we may still be working for the same companies, having a tighter integration between work and home is actually good for our mental health. Issues will be resolved faster. Nobody wants to be constantly angry in their own home. So if you're angry all the time while WFH, maybe you'll be more likely to look elsewhere. Taking breaks from work while at home is so much more refreshing. I can't think of anything more depressing that spending my lunch break in a work cafe with people I don't want to talk to, being flooded with fluorescent light, and thinking about how the rest of my working life will be spent in places like this.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  > Working the land, being close to home, running a family business, belonging to a small town of people you all known, having the social safety net of many people that are close to you and your family, being an independent contributor in the town's economy, etc. etc. This is how things were a few hundred years ago. Let’s not overglamorize rural poverty. This life came with 20–40% infant mortality and a very high rate of maternal death in childbirth (play 5+ rounds of not-quite-russian-roulette and the odds get pretty grim). Starvation and disease were ubiquitous. Many people suffered some now-trivial injury and ended up as lifelong cripples. The work was literally backbreaking and elderly people’s (i.e. >50 years old) bodies were just wrecked after a career of hard manual labor, assuming they lived that long at all. People’s indoor time was spent in small dark rooms with an open hearth worse than the worst second-hand cigarette smoke you can possibly find, and unbelievably uncomfortable beds. In the best case food was mediocre (mostly bread or porridge or similar) and everyone was slightly malnourished, especially in the winter. People generally just shat outside near their houses and hoped the dogs would take care of it. If they wanted water (for drinking, bathing, ...) they’d have to carry it on their heads/backs from the nearest well or stream; water is very heavy. People had to make literally everything in an extremely labor-intensive way from scratch: clothes, food, housing, furniture, toys, tools, etc. Raising sheep (or finding some other fiber) and then carding the wool, spinning the wool, weaving every piece of fabric on a hand loom, sewing fabric into clothes takes unbelievable amounts of human time. Making a small hut by hand takes weeks if not months of work (and the result is usually drafty, leaky, and not very comfortable). Making bread by hand including growing the grain and grinding it is nearly a full time job for everyone in the society. If for whatever reason you were different from the expected norms (or just got unlucky and crossed the wrong gossipy neighbor) the rumors about you would mercilessly destroy your social life, and possibly result in exile or death if neighbors decided you were (e.g.) a witch. The local nobles took every liberty with peasants: robbery, beatings as sport, rape, murder. The roads between towns were plagued with bandits. Etc. There’s a reason that the world has now experienced several centuries of dramatic migration away from rural peasant farming and toward horribly exploitative urban factory labor.
otabdeveloper4 6y ago
> Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives and thus making catastrophic deception nearly impossible. A plausible just-so story, but still only that.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  American Indians and Aboriginal Australians have been living like that well into historical times, and people were around to document their lives and societies - there's no real reason to suppose that humans at the most primitive state of society were living any differently. In a way, it's the one style of social organization that has truly stood the test of time; everything else has been a glorified self-imposed experiment. We're all guinea pigs living in self-enforced captivity.
  - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
    > American Indians and Aboriginal Australians have been living like that well into historical times... They're not time travelers from the past. They're our contemporaries, who are every bit as 'modern' as us. They just made a different set of choices along their historical arc. > ...there's no real reason to suppose that humans at the most primitive state of society were living any differently. At the same time there's also no real reason to suppose that primitive humans were living any similarly. We just don't know. Any attempt to frame this differently is just ideology.
    - orestarod 6y ago
      Larger number of humans were only made possible after we started farming. Primitives times refer to that old an age. If these people never went through the social evolutions the rest of the world underwent, they are indeed travelers from the past.
      - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
        > If these people never went through the social evolutions the rest of the world underwent, they are indeed travelers from the past. Logical error. That they didn't go through the same social evolutions that we went through doesn't mean they didn't go through any social evolutions at all. (And indeed they must have; even keeping their societies static takes conscious effort, in the same vein that conservative reactionaries today aren't at all the same people, ethically and sociologically, as the simpler ancestors they try to emulate.)
throwaway23419 6y ago
> Not to criticize any poster, but it is unfortunate than seeking advice from the web is currently the best one can do. Having experienced some kind of a burnout and depression myself, one of the reasons for seeking out help on the web might be the need to find that help from like-minded people, not just someone with some generic wisdom. People are quick to recommend professional help, and they aren't wrong. But a person with burnout, depression or other internal turmoil may be in dire need (or at least desire) for camaraderie from people who he considers like-minded. I knew I was. It may be very difficult to find that from mental health professionals, and of course that may not even be a therapist's task. It still leaves a hole to fill.
wvlia5 6y ago
This evolutionary take on matters feels like a template " Unhappy about <MODERN SITUATION> ? Well, in the stone age <MODERN SITUATION> wouldn't have happened, therefore, genes/anatomy not adapted and blah blah. Addicted to <MODERN HABIT> ? Well, cro-magnons found it hard to <SATISFY NEED> and genes/biology adapted to move us to <SATISFY NEED>. So now that we have solved the problem, you still have these genes that get you addicted to <MODERN HABIT>... " It was an interesting thought the first few times that I encountered it. Now it feels like a cheap way to sound clever. "Oh, this guy has an evolutionary basis for his opinions, he must know so much about history biology and genetics too" I propose we slowly let this cliche fall out of fashion.
- pharke 6y ago
  I disagree, I think it's important to remind ourselves of the inbuilt limitations of our mind and body. The same way you need to remind yourself that even though sugary food tastes good, too much of it will cause a lot of problems (and for the same reasons). We shouldn't leave it at that though, serious thought needs to be put towards how we can overcome these problems.
lkrubner 6y ago
"Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives" When did this happen? A female chimpanzee will grow up in a tribe of 30 to 150 and then at adolescence move to another tribe of 30 to 150, and occasionally, after a tribal war, end up in another tribe of 30 to 150. Each tribe was typically surrounded by 1 to 5 other tribes of 30 to 150, and of course the chimpanzees had to keep track of their enemies, just as any species that engages in territory and warfare will have to keep track of what territory is held by who. So the average chimp has to keep track of several hundred other chimps, as well as tigers, gazelles, monkeys, etc. It's a complex situation. When you say humans track 30 to 100 people, do you mean 10 million years ago? Because you can't mean homo sapiens? I personally know more than 12,000 people: http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/i-know-more-than-12000-people-so-do-you http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/i-know-more-than-1200...
- throwaway0882 6y ago
  You missed the "their whole lives" part and confuse "keep track of" to "know someone".
  - lkrubner 6y ago
    You are right, I am confused. How would I keep track of someone if I don't know them? This includes not just people but all of the animals that I interact with. My mom used to have a bird feeder and I spent countless hours watching the birds. I got to know several dozen as individuals, I was aware of their injuries and their style of eating (timid, brave, quick, slow). How might I keep track of them without knowing them? Perhaps you might consider that your ideas on this subject are a bit muddy? Also, you misread the original comment when they wrote "their whole lives" -- they are asserting people never know more than that 30 to 100 people, an assertion which is absurd.
    - throwaway0882 6y ago
      > You are right, I am confused. How would I keep track of someone if I don't know them? What are you talking about? Just because you have to know someone to keep track of them doesn't mean everyone you encounter you can track or care about.
looping__lui 6y ago
Hmm, just an anecdote (personal): My grandfather was a farmer, rural town in Europe. The village was essentially ruled by three people (just before WWII): the mayor, the police officer and the priest. There was a strict hierarchy (“who owned the most”) and gossip, treason etc. were unescapable. He (and all generations before him) worked up their bodies to the bones only to survive. I think he took a single vacation to Italy when he got married. Work has never been about “realising your dream” until somewhat recently I think... Maybe watch the movie “The Dark Valley”. A big difference may have been (and it is probably still how cultures and immigration clash): how family vs. society are seen. Germans see the government stand above family and all (e.g., government will take care of you, not family). Western societies have (deliberately) broken the family in its function. But that was probably necessary. Humans adapt, that’s why we became what we are. Not sure I have the desire to “live with 100 people in a village I don’t like” encoded in my DNA. I don’t want to downplay any anxiety or frustration, but I believe every generation had it/felt it the same way. We push and work ourselves up until we reach the level if anxiety we cannot longer cope with. Objectively speaking: Who would prefer going back 250 years in history? No way on earth. Not even as a king.

fxtentacle 6y ago

Even at that time, psychopaths were still successful enough to pass on the genes for their trait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Environment

cat199 6y ago
... as were those that think biology predetermines everything
- yownie 6y ago
  not really sure what point you're trying to make here. You don't believe in biology?
  - kitotik 6y ago
    Perhaps it was a reference to nature vs. nurture, and how they can both play a part in outcomes.
    - mrslave 6y ago
      That's what I read into it. While nature vs nurture is fun to speculate on, when raised in criticism of another's work it is usually only speculation and otherwise unproductive. Also often ignored is that they are somewhat conflated insofar as people's nature creates environments that then (not independently) nurture.
  - mcnamaratw 6y ago
    I'm not sure this is fair. Nobody really knows to what extent psychopathy is inherited vs caused by upbringing. The problem isn't necessarily disbelief in biology, the problem is nobody actually knows the answer. Challenging something that's universally challenged seems comprehensible to me.

zozbot234 6y ago

> Moving a bit further from the specifics, it's worth noting that this is not a natural state of affairs. Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives Yup, there are still some anarcho-primitivists who think technology was a bad deal for us humans overall, and that living in a tribal setting of hunters-gatherers is best. The infamous "unabomber manifesto" was broadly advocating for this worldview, albeit with a very negative, nihilistic twist to it as one might expect. Kinda ironic to point that out when you look at OP's nearly-utopian attitude to tech, of course.

paypalcust83 6y ago
UB started with the right observations, but arrived at the wrong means prescriptions. He wandered off alone into the weeds, in both senses. A wiser realization is that it's those in established power and the rich who are actively or willfully ignorantly sabotaging the planet and condemning billions of people to relatively more poverty, misery, disease, and death. A million people nonviolently showing up to the seats of power, arresting crooked politicians and their enablers, and fine-tuning what cannot be fixed (by any POTUS, SCOTUS, or COTUS) from within (separation between church and wealth and state, public campaign financing, clean elections observed with exit polls and international observers, de-emphasized celebrity political promotion perhaps by lottery [as the ancient Greeks] rather than mainstream media popularity contest) are the necessary first steps before fixing anything else.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  "Nonviolently showing up"? I might or might not agree but let's face it, most of us won't even bother to show up at a voting place on election day. People just don't care. Maybe they'll kvetch to their acquaintances about how bad the other side is, but overall there's a lot of complacency. Similarly, you don't need to arrest corrupt politicians, you just need to not vote for them. Support a primary challenger if they're incumbents. That kind of thing. But of course that's not going to happen either.
  - Aeolun 6y ago

Thorentis 6y ago

I agree with the OP comment, and also with this one. It is important to understand two things in coping with the state of the world in my opinion. 1) The reality is you need to find validation and fulfilment outside of work, because in our current society you are just a drone. 2) Don't be depressed because it seems like this is how it's always been. It hasn't. Our work culture is broken. People never used to be so far removed from their work. Trying to combine work and life is a natural thing, because people used to be tied up in it. Working the land, being close to home, running a family business, belonging to a small town of people you all known, having the social safety net of many people that are close to you and your family, being an independent contributor in the town's economy, etc. etc. This is how things were a few hundred years ago. Yes, there was less high tech gadgetry. There were corrupt officials, plagues, bad people. There will always be some element of this. I really get the sense that so much of the first world's unhappiness right now is due to compartmentalising (the containerising if you like) of our lives. The solution to burnout at work is to create greater separation between work and home. But the problem itself is that we even need to do this. People can't live to enjoy what they do any more. You need to trade the majority of your waking hours for money you need to live. And when you do live, you're dreading returning to work and feeling burnout anyway. How depressing. This is why the working-from-home trend that I hope COVID will kick-off is going to be a good thing. While we may still be working for the same companies, having a tighter integration between work and home is actually good for our mental health. Issues will be resolved faster. Nobody wants to be constantly angry in their own home. So if you're angry all the time while WFH, maybe you'll be more likely to look elsewhere. Taking breaks from work while at home is so much more refreshing. I can't think of anything more depressing that spending my lunch break in a work cafe with people I don't want to talk to, being flooded with fluorescent light, and thinking about how the rest of my working life will be spent in places like this.

jacobolus 6y ago
> Working the land, being close to home, running a family business, belonging to a small town of people you all known, having the social safety net of many people that are close to you and your family, being an independent contributor in the town's economy, etc. etc. This is how things were a few hundred years ago. Let’s not overglamorize rural poverty. This life came with 20–40% infant mortality and a very high rate of maternal death in childbirth (play 5+ rounds of not-quite-russian-roulette and the odds get pretty grim). Starvation and disease were ubiquitous. Many people suffered some now-trivial injury and ended up as lifelong cripples. The work was literally backbreaking and elderly people’s (i.e. >50 years old) bodies were just wrecked after a career of hard manual labor, assuming they lived that long at all. People’s indoor time was spent in small dark rooms with an open hearth worse than the worst second-hand cigarette smoke you can possibly find, and unbelievably uncomfortable beds. In the best case food was mediocre (mostly bread or porridge or similar) and everyone was slightly malnourished, especially in the winter. People generally just shat outside near their houses and hoped the dogs would take care of it. If they wanted water (for drinking, bathing, ...) they’d have to carry it on their heads/backs from the nearest well or stream; water is very heavy. People had to make literally everything in an extremely labor-intensive way from scratch: clothes, food, housing, furniture, toys, tools, etc. Raising sheep (or finding some other fiber) and then carding the wool, spinning the wool, weaving every piece of fabric on a hand loom, sewing fabric into clothes takes unbelievable amounts of human time. Making a small hut by hand takes weeks if not months of work (and the result is usually drafty, leaky, and not very comfortable). Making bread by hand including growing the grain and grinding it is nearly a full time job for everyone in the society. If for whatever reason you were different from the expected norms (or just got unlucky and crossed the wrong gossipy neighbor) the rumors about you would mercilessly destroy your social life, and possibly result in exile or death if neighbors decided you were (e.g.) a witch. The local nobles took every liberty with peasants: robbery, beatings as sport, rape, murder. The roads between towns were plagued with bandits. Etc. There’s a reason that the world has now experienced several centuries of dramatic migration away from rural peasant farming and toward horribly exploitative urban factory labor.

otabdeveloper4 6y ago

> Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives and thus making catastrophic deception nearly impossible. A plausible just-so story, but still only that.

zozbot234 6y ago
American Indians and Aboriginal Australians have been living like that well into historical times, and people were around to document their lives and societies - there's no real reason to suppose that humans at the most primitive state of society were living any differently. In a way, it's the one style of social organization that has truly stood the test of time; everything else has been a glorified self-imposed experiment. We're all guinea pigs living in self-enforced captivity.
- otabdeveloper4 6y ago
  > American Indians and Aboriginal Australians have been living like that well into historical times... They're not time travelers from the past. They're our contemporaries, who are every bit as 'modern' as us. They just made a different set of choices along their historical arc. > ...there's no real reason to suppose that humans at the most primitive state of society were living any differently. At the same time there's also no real reason to suppose that primitive humans were living any similarly. We just don't know. Any attempt to frame this differently is just ideology.
  - orestarod 6y ago
    Larger number of humans were only made possible after we started farming. Primitives times refer to that old an age. If these people never went through the social evolutions the rest of the world underwent, they are indeed travelers from the past.
    - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
      > If these people never went through the social evolutions the rest of the world underwent, they are indeed travelers from the past. Logical error. That they didn't go through the same social evolutions that we went through doesn't mean they didn't go through any social evolutions at all. (And indeed they must have; even keeping their societies static takes conscious effort, in the same vein that conservative reactionaries today aren't at all the same people, ethically and sociologically, as the simpler ancestors they try to emulate.)

throwaway23419 6y ago

> Not to criticize any poster, but it is unfortunate than seeking advice from the web is currently the best one can do. Having experienced some kind of a burnout and depression myself, one of the reasons for seeking out help on the web might be the need to find that help from like-minded people, not just someone with some generic wisdom. People are quick to recommend professional help, and they aren't wrong. But a person with burnout, depression or other internal turmoil may be in dire need (or at least desire) for camaraderie from people who he considers like-minded. I knew I was. It may be very difficult to find that from mental health professionals, and of course that may not even be a therapist's task. It still leaves a hole to fill.

wvlia5 6y ago

This evolutionary take on matters feels like a template " Unhappy about <MODERN SITUATION> ? Well, in the stone age <MODERN SITUATION> wouldn't have happened, therefore, genes/anatomy not adapted and blah blah. Addicted to <MODERN HABIT> ? Well, cro-magnons found it hard to <SATISFY NEED> and genes/biology adapted to move us to <SATISFY NEED>. So now that we have solved the problem, you still have these genes that get you addicted to <MODERN HABIT>... " It was an interesting thought the first few times that I encountered it. Now it feels like a cheap way to sound clever. "Oh, this guy has an evolutionary basis for his opinions, he must know so much about history biology and genetics too" I propose we slowly let this cliche fall out of fashion.

pharke 6y ago
I disagree, I think it's important to remind ourselves of the inbuilt limitations of our mind and body. The same way you need to remind yourself that even though sugary food tastes good, too much of it will cause a lot of problems (and for the same reasons). We shouldn't leave it at that though, serious thought needs to be put towards how we can overcome these problems.

lkrubner 6y ago

"Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives" When did this happen? A female chimpanzee will grow up in a tribe of 30 to 150 and then at adolescence move to another tribe of 30 to 150, and occasionally, after a tribal war, end up in another tribe of 30 to 150. Each tribe was typically surrounded by 1 to 5 other tribes of 30 to 150, and of course the chimpanzees had to keep track of their enemies, just as any species that engages in territory and warfare will have to keep track of what territory is held by who. So the average chimp has to keep track of several hundred other chimps, as well as tigers, gazelles, monkeys, etc. It's a complex situation. When you say humans track 30 to 100 people, do you mean 10 million years ago? Because you can't mean homo sapiens? I personally know more than 12,000 people: http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/i-know-more-than-12000-people-so-do-you http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/i-know-more-than-1200...

throwaway0882 6y ago
You missed the "their whole lives" part and confuse "keep track of" to "know someone".
- lkrubner 6y ago
  You are right, I am confused. How would I keep track of someone if I don't know them? This includes not just people but all of the animals that I interact with. My mom used to have a bird feeder and I spent countless hours watching the birds. I got to know several dozen as individuals, I was aware of their injuries and their style of eating (timid, brave, quick, slow). How might I keep track of them without knowing them? Perhaps you might consider that your ideas on this subject are a bit muddy? Also, you misread the original comment when they wrote "their whole lives" -- they are asserting people never know more than that 30 to 100 people, an assertion which is absurd.
  - throwaway0882 6y ago
    > You are right, I am confused. How would I keep track of someone if I don't know them? What are you talking about? Just because you have to know someone to keep track of them doesn't mean everyone you encounter you can track or care about.

looping__lui 6y ago

Hmm, just an anecdote (personal): My grandfather was a farmer, rural town in Europe. The village was essentially ruled by three people (just before WWII): the mayor, the police officer and the priest. There was a strict hierarchy (“who owned the most”) and gossip, treason etc. were unescapable. He (and all generations before him) worked up their bodies to the bones only to survive. I think he took a single vacation to Italy when he got married. Work has never been about “realising your dream” until somewhat recently I think... Maybe watch the movie “The Dark Valley”. A big difference may have been (and it is probably still how cultures and immigration clash): how family vs. society are seen. Germans see the government stand above family and all (e.g., government will take care of you, not family). Western societies have (deliberately) broken the family in its function. But that was probably necessary. Humans adapt, that’s why we became what we are. Not sure I have the desire to “live with 100 people in a village I don’t like” encoded in my DNA. I don’t want to downplay any anxiety or frustration, but I believe every generation had it/felt it the same way. We push and work ourselves up until we reach the level if anxiety we cannot longer cope with. Objectively speaking: Who would prefer going back 250 years in history? No way on earth. Not even as a king.